One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
For example, compare the live action Disney Cinderella to the original animated version. The live action version is mostly a voiceover telling the story of Cinderella. They literally say “Her stepsisters weren’t very good at art or music” and then have a scene showing them being bad at art and music. The animated version spent the first 20 minutes or so like a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
And this is across movies. I watched Predator recently and there wasn’t a lot of exposition about how they’re there to fight communists or whatever. You pick that up in snippets of dialog in between the action.
I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It’s the only movie I’ve seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me
One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn’t my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven’t seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if “HE” returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.
One thing I’ve noticed with newer movies is they do a lot more “tell, don’t show” than old movies.
For example, compare the live action Disney Cinderella to the original animated version. The live action version is mostly a voiceover telling the story of Cinderella. They literally say “Her stepsisters weren’t very good at art or music” and then have a scene showing them being bad at art and music. The animated version spent the first 20 minutes or so like a Tom & Jerry cartoon.
And this is across movies. I watched Predator recently and there wasn’t a lot of exposition about how they’re there to fight communists or whatever. You pick that up in snippets of dialog in between the action.
It really does feel like movies are dumbing down.
I feel like Dune was a good outlier to this. It’s the only movie I’ve seen in theater in the last few years and I really enjoyed not having everything explained to me
Main character seeing old friend: Well if it isn’t my old friend Daniel, we used to roam these streets as kids, I used to have dinner at your house every day, you were like my brother, I would have done anything for you, I haven’t seen you since our other old friend Jake died mysteriously, remember when we used to play videogames all night and made that life long pact that if “HE” returns we will do what it takes to send him back to the world where he emerged from when we were kids and lived right next door to each other, our mothers were best friends until the incident but they never stopped us from being life long best friends forever, we used to play in the streets all night, me you Daniel and Chris, the rat Pac they called us, best friends for life.